I can hear the nation cry

I’ve heard a rumor from Ground Control

Oh no, don’t say it’s true

~~ David Bowie, “Ashes to Ashes”

It was a bad start to the week. A horrible, no-good, rotten start. The first thing I saw Monday morning when I got online was that David Bowie had died. “Another stupid death hoax,” I thought.

I was wrong.

I couldn’t bring myself to write about it until a few days had passed. Hell, I couldn’t even hear one of his songs without crying...hearing that beautiful voice and knowing that it would never sing again. When a musician I’m particularly fond of dies, I usually do a music marathon as a tribute to them. It’s a wonderful reminder of what they have contributed to the world at large and to me, personally. I couldn’t do that with Bowie. I couldn’t even read all the tributes posted in his honor. I read a few, but they all made me cry, and I knew that I had to step away and distance myself if I didn’t want to just cry my stupid eyes out. Which I did anyway.

Some might wonder how or why I would cry so hard over someone I’ve never met. One of the best explanations I’ve read about that came from a Twitter user named Juliette: “We don't cry because we knew them, we cry because they helped us know ourselves.” Well said, Juliette. That is definitely part of it.

For me, it was also that it came as such a shock. It was a total sucker punch for me. I stay fairly current on news about my favorite musicians, and I hadn’t heard one peep about how ill he was. I’d seen a rumor about a possible heart attack and then never heard anything more about it, so I assumed that if he really did have one, he recovered fully. To learn that he’d been diagnosed with liver cancer 18 months ago was absolutely a complete surprise. When it came to someone like Johnny Cash, I knew he’d been having a lot of health problems and was seriously ill. While his death hit me hard, it wasn’t the stunner that Bowie’s death was to me. When you aren’t expecting a hit deep to left field, it’s easy to get beaned.

I don’t claim to be the biggest Bowie fan out there. Many are much more familiar with his work and the more obscure tracks. But I have been a fan for many years, probably starting in the early to mid-’70s and continuing to his most recent stuff. I missed a couple of his more recent albums, the ones before his triumphant return with “The Next Day” in 2013, and those are on their way. I got his most recent one, “Blackstar,” on its release day, which also happened to be his 69th birthday. I listened to it that morning and loved its trippiness. I commented to a friend that if I smoked opium, I’d want to listen to the album as I lounged about on my opium couch! I look forward to listening to it in depth.

As I’ve pondered his death over the week, I’ve thought about how fortunate I am to have seen him twice in concert. Once back in the late ‘80s on the Glass Spider tour, and once in the ‘90s on the Sound + Vision tour. Ken and I had talked about going to see him if he toured again, and I’m sorry that Ken will not have that chance.

I’ve also thought about the profound influence he had upon music, culture, and fashion. My beloved Duran Duran claims him as one of their biggest influences and have said that they wouldn’t exist without Bowie. There are so many others who can make the same claim, and you can see them in the excellent graphic included in this post (click to embiggenate). Not every artist can be said to have changed the course of music history, but Bowie is one of them. The potent mix of musical talent, showmanship, art, rebelliousness, style sense...he had it all, and he changed the world. He certainly changed my world.

It is also a reminder of how our time here is limited. I think it’s fair to say that Bowie smoked most of us in terms of accomplishments and significance, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t do the best with what talent and time we have. It’s easy to grow complacent and imbue someone like Bowie with almost immortal status. He’s David Bowie! He can’t die! But he can, and he did. And so can we all. The loss of someone so influential, both to the world and to me personally, is hard.

Farewell Ziggy, Aladdin, Thin White Duke, Major Tom. Whatever you called yourself, however you reinvented yourself...you were one of a kind and you were a bright star in our skies, one that will shine forever.

Beth’s Music Moment: “(You Will) Set the World on Fire” - David Bowie

About a week after it came out, I wrote about the amazing new Bowie album, “The Next Day.”

I listened to it nonstop for two weeks, and although I’ve been on a Stones kick for a while for obvious reasons, I’ve been listening to this album again for the past week.

The entire thing is just fantastic, and the more I listen to it, the more I love it. My favorite track is the one in the title of this entry. It reminds me a little of “(Cat People) Putting Out Fire” in its rock anthem-ness. It is an absolute scorcher of a song, and I cannot get enough of it. Props to the person who did the fan video posted here. Very cool visuals!

1. Bowie’s voice. Holy shit, that ethereal voice!! As someone once described Jim Morrison’s voice, it is “a fist in a velvet glove.” It’s all cognac and cigarette smoke and a caress on the cheek and a finger up the ass. It is nasty goodness, and his voice on this track just SOARS.

2. At around the 1:25 mark in this video, he absolutely chews through the lyrics. When he says, “We are in the wat-uh,” it just makes me feel crazy. CRAZY.

3. The guitar solo around 2:10 is smokin’ hot. That sustained note is just INCREDIBLE.

4. Things really start building around 2:40, and when he yells “You will set it on fi-yaaah!” at 2:50, it’s like a freakin’ climax. After listening to it a couple of times today when working out, I actually said, “Ohhh, David!” haha

This whole song is one big aural orgasm. It unleashes my Inner Lizard. As Rolling Stone said, “Holy shit, David Bowie.”

If I still smoked, I’d have a cigarette right now.

Catch-up time!

Whoops, time got away from me again, but that seems to happen frequently now. We had a funeral to go to in there, but I’m going to focus on happier things. I’ll just say that I am very grateful for a loving family.

I tweeted my previous entry, about Parental Alienation Syndrome, to Alec Baldwin, as well as a tweet thanking him for writing his book. I guess I just wanted him to know that it helped me...it helped to realize that others have experienced the same thing. It’s kind of amazing to me that someone like him, with millions of dollars at his disposal, and people like us, who don’t have those kinds of resources, could go through almost the exact same thing. His ordeal was much more public, and was fought more in the courts, but it was still amazingly similar. He actually tweeted back to me! He said thank you, and also said that if you spend millions, you can usually get rulings in your favor...but that there is no enforcement of the rulings.

Anyway, it was pretty cool that he tweeted me back. I hope that hearing that his book helped us also helped him a bit, knowing that he did a good service to all those people who have had to deal with vindictive exes who can’t set aside their anger and bitterness for the sake of their own children’s emotional well-being.

The next two things are music-related, so not so heavy! If you are interested in rock music at all, you’ll know that David Bowie recently released his first album in ten years, “The Next Day.” I liked Bowie a lot back in the day, and got to see him twice, once in Winnipeg and once in Indianapolis. I still enjoy listening to his stuff once in a while, so I was pretty excited about this new album. I pre-ordered it and got it the day it came out...and proceeded to listen to almost nothing else for the next couple of weeks.

It is FANTASTIC. Critics are saying it is his best album in thirty years. I can’t really speak to that, but I can tell you that I love it. There are pensive tracks like “Where Are We Now?” and “You Feel So Lonely You Could Die.” There are danceable tracks like “Dancing Out In Space” and “I’ll Take You There” (which is a bonus track on the deeeeluxe version). I love these lines in the title track: “Here I am, not quite dying, a body left to rot in a hollow tree.” Not quite dying, indeed, Mr. Bowie! I love the song “I’d Rather Be High,” which seems to be about young people fighting stupid wars:

I’d rather be high

I’d rather be flying

I’d rather be dead

Or out of my head

Than training these guns on those men in the sand

I’m seventeen my looks can prove it

I’m so afraid that I will lose it

I’d rather smoke and phone my ex

Pleading for some teenage sex

Yeah

But my absolute favorite is “(You Will) Set the World on Fire,” a rock anthem that showcases Bowie’s still-impressive voice. When he belts out,

You will set the world babe

You will set the world on fi-yah

I can work the scene babe

I can see the magazines

I can hear the nation

I can hear the nation cry

You will set the world babe

You will set the world on fire

You will set it on fire

...his voice just soars on the high notes, and no matter how many times I hear it, he has me punching my fists in the air at the chorus. This song gives me chills! You can hear the entire album on this video (and I recommend it highly), but I’ve tried to embed it so that it starts at the song I just mentioned. If the video starts at the beginning, the song starts at around 40:30. Turn it up!

Finally, the big announcement came today, one that was considered to be the worst-kept secret in the music world: the Rolling Stones are touring! I had originally heard that they were going to do 18 US dates, and I was hoping for a Cleveland show so we could make three days of it and see the new Stones exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but they aren’t doing that many (so far) and our closest show is, of course, Chicago. After their limited five-show tour in 2012, word was that they are still sounding great and playing tight, and they made it pretty obvious that they were having fun (not to mention making some big bucks!).

We’re going, but the question is whether I’ll be able to get tickets when they go on sale, and if not, how much will we have to pay through a broker? It looks like tickets are going to range from $185 to upwards of $600, and I’m guessing they’ll go incredibly fast. I’ll do my best to get them when they go on sale Monday morning! I’ve said for some time that I want to see the Stones one more time before I die (I saw them in ‘89 in Indianapolis), and this will probably be my last chance. I’m not getting any younger, and Mick and Keith and the boys sure as hell aren’t!

It’s looking to be a fun summer...if it ever gets here!